


Reflections

by edibleflowers



Category: Popslash
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-14 11:56:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edibleflowers/pseuds/edibleflowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Justin reflects on his surreal life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflections

**Author's Note:**

> My brain was randomly firing. thanks to Jordan M (silicongirl) for the beta and helping me figure out how to finish it.

Most of the time, he tried not to let it affect him. Most of the time, it worked.

The weirdness of it all, even after three or four years, still got to him once in a while. Every now and then, during a slow song, he'd turn and catch a glimpse of himself up on the Jumbotron, and he'd be struck by it all anew: _that's me, up there, that's ME that they're all screaming for, and I'm the one singing for sixty thousand people, it's my voice, it's ME_ , and it would make him dizzy, the scope of it.

Sometimes he looked at the room where he kept all the awards from the various shows. MTV, American Music Awards, Billboard, Teen Choice, whatever. He didn't even remember half of the shows now; they all seemed to blur into one long ceremony, with the occasional moment standing out like when the guy from Rage climbed the structure at the last MTV awards, or the girl that had assaulted him in the bathroom at some awards show in California. That was the kind of thing he didn't like to remember.

"The price of fame" was something he heard about constantly. Talk show hosts brought it up, girls at soundcheck parties asked him what he thought of it. He didn't mind the bad stuff so much. That was what he called the downside, the bad stuff. The hours and hours on buses that seemed to drive forever and get nowhere. The Christmas he had had to spend in Germany instead of at home, and how he and Lance had cried, the others trying not to but he could tell they were just as upset. The girl in, was it Foxboro or Giants Stadium? even that was a blur, and that was recent, who had somehow jumped up on the catwalk and grabbed his crotch. He was pretty sure she hadn't been aiming there, but she'd flailed blindly, screaming incoherently, and security hadn't been fast enough, and it had taken him a few minutes to stop shaking, to force himself to keep going with the show.

He took the bad stuff in stride, because it happened, that sort of stuff happened when you were a world-famous pop star. He knew he wasn't lying when he'd said that he didn't think of himself as a celebrity, because he didn't, for the most part; he honestly didn't go around saying stupid shit like "I'm the world-famous Justin Timberlake and y'all better respect my ass". Actually, he'd done that a little when the group first went huge in America, and then the others had kind of beat down on him a little, kicked him back into mental shape, and he'd gotten over that phase.

But he wondered sometimes what it would be like if he wasn't Justin Timberlake, or if something else had happened and he hadn't ended up here. He'd always wanted to sing, yeah, but what if his mom hadn't let him audition for MMC, or what if he hadn't made it? What if they'd lived somewhere else where it wasn't quite so close (not that Memphis was that close to Orlando, but it was better than, say, Alaska or something)? What if his parents had never been divorced, and he'd grown up like some normal kid in a normal house, gone to school, gone to high school? Would he have played basketball on a normal varsity team? Would he have gone to college? What would he be majoring in? After all, he'd be in his second year now, a sophomore.

Sometimes he found himself craving that. Wanting to be an anonymous college student, on some big campus where you occasionally had to ride your bike to class because the buildings were so far away. Even the normal student stuff, like studying and exams and that kind of thing, seemed ridiculously appealing, sometimes, when he looked up at the Jumbotron and saw himself looking at himself into infinity.

Yeah, there would be bad stuff there, too. Like fucking up classes, or who knew what all, drinking maybe, not that he didn't do that now. He didn't even know what kind of bad stuff there would be, but it probably wouldn't be on the same level. Even if the college was somewhere far away from home, he'd still be able to come home now and then, and over Christmas, and for the summer he wouldn't have to do anything but get a summer job.

Still. It was a nice fantasy. He liked to entertain it every now and then when he couldn't sleep. Laid in his bunk on the bus and pictured himself with the bandanna on, because he might have kept the hair after all, and wearing jeans and a t-shirt with the name of some local band on it, a big backpack over his shoulder, walking to class, waving to friends here and there. The weather was nice, and the campus had trees, and maybe there was a girl, a nice normal girl, who held his hand and walked in stride with him, who didn't demand the universe or act one way in public and another way in private. Or maybe there was a boy, he admitted he liked that thought too, and they could be open because it was a college and people were open-minded in college, right?

He knew he was deluding himself a bit there, because look at Matthew Shepard, and frat boys and who knew what all. But it was his fantasy, so in his fantasy no one bothered them when they held hands in public.

He put the fantasy up against that image of himself against the Jumbotron, and he liked the disparity. What if he could leave? If someone gave him three wishes or something, waved a magic wand, poof, he could be just a normal guy, going to school, that sort of thing. Would he take it?

He had to think about that one. He had to admit, he'd definitely gotten used to being famous. There were things he didn't even think about half the time, like doing laundry, or the fact he could have a pizza whenever he wanted; that there were people who jumped to fulfill his every command, even if he hadn't initially wanted them, that he had a personal assistant for crying out loud. Would he be able to give all that up?

He liked to think so. Because he'd have to get used to it someday, when it all ended. It would end; he was realistic about that, which was part of why he tried to appreciate it all now. Hard to believe that at some point in the future, all the girls that screamed his name now would care less about him, that they would have moved on. That they wouldn't be buying his partially-eaten French toast online, that the music wouldn't sell anymore. It wasn't something he liked to think about; in ways, it scared him. But it would happen, and he'd deal. That's what he did.


End file.
